Saturday, September 19, 2015

3 DAYS/3 WALKS PART THREE: THE EASTER EGG HUNT 1991

My head goes dervish derby and the music takes me to a sad, mourning, world-anchored bittersweet look back in sadness euphoria...in these throes of wounded despair I wish to tear my flesh off, break the indifferent membrane of this dirty, unjust coil, to go where it doesn't matter, won't matter, ever.....
In dreamland I see it again, head on, dead on, the image, blood creating a new and growing and altogether damp and sticky world on earthly, mundane floral pattern velvet and I am a sprawled mannequin, naked, pale, in a frozen, silent, muted scream---statue of drained human ash remnant, leftover, trash----my wrists hold the one semblance of a lifething as they sore and ooze and bubble---the twin, ragged, furious maws grieve aloud---bashed, mangled life ebbs away from them, still wet and blackcrimson and raging as they seem, the clutch of life would still appear to be upon them----
-----Music is playing closing out the slothful ignorant parchment world and my dark is a crazyquilt of mauled emotion; I'm huddled, manfetus, on this carpet and I'm rocking like precision machinery and somewhere in the haunted back, the pain attic, I know I'm crying---I can't stop---retreating into my nucleus, loser again—failure again—the worst man again—booby prizer tot of the Easter Egg Hunt again and I cannot change it, cannot steer it in my direction it won't end---
---I unkrinkle my body and try to heave it into a semi-upright position---I open my eyes and stare---the first time with open eyes in a sea or so; it takes nothing to focus as if I've been accustomed to the dark---I stare at the corner of my room---the space of white (now gray) wall between my closet and my bureaub and it's there, confronting me, glaring back eyeless shapeless but it's intent on me....
The black thing. I can't make it out—an object, a blotch, there sitting, facing me---what is it? Black----so deeply black it eclipses everything, like a cavity in the world that threatens to swallow everything, everyone----
Facing me---
No---
The black thing sits, stationary, immobile, looking at me----a penetrator, a cancer that poked, violating, thunder, raping this world and it is intent on me, this abomination......I can't look anymore.....
I fold up, enclose, and shut my eyes, wrap my arms around my head and pray for the black thing to leave me. The music merrygorounds again and again---I need it now to blot out the beckoning, the whisper of the black thing. Sick. I throw up on the floor. I keep my eyes shut and I try in my mind to crumble into coal, to unwant, to invincibility so that the black thing will leave me alone----
At an ageless time I awaken. The stench of my vomit is incredible and my displaced head feels like a racetrack-----the black thing is gone, it has vacated the corner. That's an empty worldsmile---I know with my deep downest that it will return come nightfall to torment me----
***********
Running, now, downtown in the cold and the laugh of the springsummer electric Coke commercial dirt---people laughing and squinting phase in and out of my tear bleared vision---nine beers plus what the hell ever and I can't walk a straight line, I can't stop, the Janeharrow is whittling at my insides---I can't go home; I have to escape the night sit solitude in my fetal crawl and the gloom and the close and the silent threat and stare and point of the black thing, the new intruder in my house.....
Outside is a teetering carnival full of jeering clowns---Emmett Kelly in shadow and cigar and shitstain and laughing, ballyhooing fat ladies, circus renegades with pissed-on flower sundresses all bleached and worn---pukes and pugs congeal and clot on corners, playing King of the Mountain for bleachy-headed, gum-snapping ragamuffin dumpster porn angels; yowling, smearingunshaven,, toothless phantoms rove by like obstacles on a hellish, nocturnal sideways funhouse distortion mirror drivers' course----they haunt me and chastise me and in the blunt of my blur and my desperation I throttle among them away as they come too close----
---the sidewalk, pissing and shitting, discarded journal rags blow by me and it's all a sewer, a sewer carnival and every fifth girl I bump into is a Janething, a giggling, mocking counterfeit Jane, a worm in the mold and disease of the rubble of that harsh dynasty---the haves, the have-nots, the you-can't-haves, the golden chalice in chains, the shut-in angels, away, Tantalus, the little Janes, the inescapable crush of sorrow, of madness, of hell, of hurt, and it won't stop, it won't stop----
Cal Kelly the remnant crashes, flaming to earth all ashen and ruined, uuuuuuuhhhhh, I cry aloud, uuuuuuuuhhhhh, no more, no more, oh, God please no more and I die and my stomach twists and needles up as I fall, teeth clamping down---I cry, I taste blood, I smash my chin on the cement...all around me the gleeing, sneering, roving outdoor den of shambling garbage people point and laugh at this new spectacle---wiping my chin I turn on them. “You don't know,” I roar and my voice is fragmented, teetering out of an even tone, a bellowing, cracked trumpet, “none of you, not one of you fucks know, goddammit, Confucius say no problem, but there is a big problem, a big problem, and it's right here!” I stumble to my feet and I mime throwing rocks at them, all the plaster-faced, sniggering multitudes. “I look around at all of you and there's nothing, just nothing!” I shrug my shoulders cartoonish and bigfoot, and then I start screaming again. “For the five fuckingb card games you win some sad son loses every godforsaken day of his life, damn you all, and this, and THIS sorry opus is the bare-assed crux of it all----who did you forget? No, don't tell me....ask yourself! What about the forgotten ones?!” Dull faces stare back----this is the downtown zoo and more and more I realize I am the panda bear. “She forgot me,” I cry, hands extended, “I am forgotten.”
They are frozen, uncomprehending----I give up. Zero. Gone. I turn and shun their dumb scrape of skeetch this, chillun and I look at the stairs, the classical, elegant rough bludgeoned railed cement tower thing, the walkway I cut my burning, babbling, grieving head on---the stoop is scopeful, architectural refinement and it leads into the church. I stumble up those stairs and halfway to the summit I crash splintering to my wobbly knees scuff scrape and bleed cold scorches like ropeskip asphalt mishap child-manhood---I crawl to the entrance and I'm muttering every spare despair desperate litany left at my disposal....the church's dim innards loom, the towering stained glass robular Sunday School legend hero designs and a hunched, shawled womanthing putters around inside, painstakingly setting ablaze a network of candles, all solemnly peeping hotlight in a tangled assortment of twisting candelabrum; each candle, each atom of twilight fire represents a Saint, from booming Saints like Anthony and Joseph and John and Jude (of that Novena fame) and Christopher and Patrick and Valentine all in their congregation with obscure Saints----the Saint of mottled flesh, the patron Saint of the nearsighted, the Patron Saint of Zydeco music, the Patron Saint of nose hairs, all in a holy jumble and I'm peaking, summitting and I'm creeping for the Jesusholy refuge sanctuary cavern and now the Priest, Father Ironclad, Padre McVictory, arrives in his robes of glory and rebukes me.
“Sorry, buddy,” he rasps, “we're closed an' we don't take vagrants.”
“I'm lost,” I squall. “I'm God's Children!”
“Want a medal?” The Priest snarls. He slams the Cathedral doors in my face and I hear the lock click into mechanical intercourse with itself---the Heavenly Host booms in boundless celebration and I watch the iron entryway solidify, become inaccessible, before my eyes....... 
 
Copyright 1991 C.F. Roberts/2015 Molotov Editions

I went about this kinda in reverse, or roundways, mostly because it's my fuckin' blog, and I can if I want. HELLO, UGLY was actually the first Walk, and I wanted to craft a kind of Dark Night of the Soul where you're literally with this kid every step of the way as his already-precariously-balanced cheese is sliding off his cracker.
The Walk in THE EASTER EGG HUNT is a nervous breakdown on paper....to me all of these bust down into a sequence kind of like the Stations of the Cross----that, of course, is my lapsed Catholicism at work.....and the Catholicism in THE EASTER EGG HUNT is pretty overt. Some of that is, yeah----obviously a Kerouac ripoff-----but you can take the boy out of the church-----can you ever really take the church out of the boy? Well, maybe, if you have a good scalpel.....I don't know if I was following a conscious motif at that point with the Walks, but it was definitely there......
When I wrote “The Walk” in '93 or '94 I knew exactly what I was doing and it was kind of a “Meta” piece where I was going through my usual messed up pathology and at this point I could break down the nuts and bolts of my pathology and tell you exactly what the ingredients were.
I wrote several Walks throughout the '90s somewhat similar to the ones I've posted in this little run. Another story I wrote around that time, “Shark's Fin Slices”(title taken from a line in The Birthday Party's “Six-Inch Gold Blade”) was very similar in tone and theme to “The Walk”----in fact, the line in “The Walk”, Not a bloody lot in the whole sad world, you saviors you liberators you hawkish mawkish regulators can preserve me from THE WALK---also appeared in “Shark's Fin Slices”, which probably tells you I have some trouble telling the two stories apart, but they share lots of similarities.
Another big early Walk was in a short story called “The Night is for Lovers” (The granddaddy of all my Guy Who Can't Get Laid stories), which was actually based around this semi-spoken word piece I did with the S.E. Apocalypse Krew. As a spoken word piece it was my knee-jerk reaction to codependency and dysfunction. The story, which was from 1990 or so, concerned a socially awkward office drone who gets passed up for a promotion in favor of a more extroverted, charismatic co-worker. To belabor the point, the latter also nabs the protagonist's longtime office crush. The character goes off on his own brief Dark Night of the Soul, which culminates in him watching some random couple engaging in a stupid, codependent squabble. He concludes, “I'll never be a part of any bullshit like that,” and he goes off, ominously enough, “into darkness”, and that's the end of the story----the note probably suggesting he might go postal or become a serial killer or something to that effect----in reality, using today's Johnny-on-the-Trend vernacular, he probably goes on to become an MRA, or a MGTOW, or a TFLer, or some other such asshole like that. In short, he's a lonely asshole who's very hung up on being a lonely asshole. And he will probably die a lonely asshole.
I released “The Night is for Lovers” as a longish chapbook on Shockbox Press. As far as short stories go it was kinda lengthy and way above the word count of what most publications were accepting for short stories. And again, it was my press----I was gonna do whatever the fuck I wanted. That was the inaugural year for Shockbox Press---I released THE MASSACRE ANNEX and BOTTOM LEVEL the same year, both of which got a better reception than TNIFL. Oh, well.
If I were to write another Walk in the future my goal would probably be to construct it very tightly around a Stations of the Cross motif and I'd probably model the various segments around the individual stations. I've got no immediate plans to do that, but it's a neat literary trope that might bear repeating in some form or fashion if the right piece of writing calls for it.

Friday, September 18, 2015

3 DAYS/3 WALKS PART TWO: HELLO, UGLY (1990)

And so now I walk away from my house. I have to get away from it. I really think it's just that I sort of have to get away from everything. No rest, no peace, my brain is a screeching light and I don't know how to shut it off.
Wandering about this jungle and everything I see bugs me. It's like it's all ashes in an ashtray. I can't ever touch cigarette ashes. They have this awful, alien feeling like they're nothing anyone is ever meant to put their fingers on. Everything around me is like that right now. Repellent. Get it the fuck away from me.
Ungodly suburbs. This shit isn't civilization. It's like a big, split-level Brady Bunch cemetery. It's like the cemetery I went to today, except that had tombstones, this has houses.
The rows of empty, dead houses go on forever, but the time passes fast because my head is like a big locomotive and it won't stop going. I can't continue like this, that's all I know. I need to be forgiven for the terrible thing I did. I know I was wrong but there has to be a way out of this trap.
Suddenly, “rurrurrurr,” a dog pops out of its yard and attacks me. It doesn't bite me, but it runs out of the shadows and it yaps and yaps away like a mad thing. It's probably afraid of my face. I'm scared and I can feel my nervous heart slamming away in my chest, but then the fear goes away and now I'm laughing because the dog looks like Lassie.
On I walk and I keep yukking even though that dog gave me a good scare. My heart keeps pounding away, though, like a piledriver, earth shattering. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
After a while the hill bottoms out into Windham Street. Cars fly by, their lights trailing behind them like wild, glowing vapor trails from jet planes and it's scary and exciting and I think about diving into it for a few seconds. I don't go through with it, though. I'm not real sure that what's beyond the sailing lights is as big a thrill as the lights themselves. The whole thing blows me away, though, just thinking there's at least one person in all those cars. Maybe there are whole families in some of them. That's wild...all those people., catching this quick glimpse of me as they speed down the tubes. Where will they end up? What's their destination? Nothing good in this world. Maybe it'd be more humane if they put up this big detour sign that led them all straight to the bottom of the Merrimack River or something. Whatever. Still, the fleeting sight of me by the side of the road must be fucking with these peoples' worlds in a major league way. I try to imagine the trauma they must all be feeling, taking the image of my shattered, zig-zagged killer's face through the rest of their lives.
I can't begin to figure out how it might affect them, but it makes me laugh, Then I have to stop laughing because it's terrible. Then I have to laugh again.
The 7-11's across the street, beckoning me like a glowing, inviting church. The sight of it makes me sad because I have no money and it would be a waste of time for me to go there. It's not like I could even bum around there and read the magazines on account of the way I look. Some son of a bitch with glaring eyes and sharp wolf teeth would chase me out of the store, beating me over the head with a broom or something.
I don't know what to do or where to go. I walk down the road toward downtown Brookdale. It's just my nature, now, to follow my feet. I walk home from school, I walk the cemetery, I walk home from Juan's house, I walked home from the Hobby Shoppe, back when I still worked there.
Up, up, up the street...everything is shrouded in night-quiet like there's nobody living on this planet but me. I'm not sure I like it, but maybe it's better. Look at me, I'm a walking abomination that kills.
Sometimes I'm walking past trees, sometimes past little pockets of houses. Civilization. Civilization in a Coma, with all the lights out.
In the yard of one house I'm walking past I hear a big dog barking out its warning, “Woowoowoowoowoo! Woo!” It booms. I don't see it. The dog might be chained. Why be stupid and take guesses? I amble back across the street. I keep moving and the dog won't stop barking. I think I travel hundreds of feet and wind around the corner and it's still barking.
Summer is coming. Not that I give a flying shit, it's just that I know Summer's coming. It's hot and muggy out and the sky is clear. The crickets are chirping their lonely song in disunity and I wonder if all these brainless little bugs feel as lost as I do out here. I saw a close-up picture of a cricket once. They're not as cute as Jiminy. They look like little monsters. I wonder if they know it?
The sky is too huige and when I look at it I get dizzy and sad and I have to stop staring at it and keep my eyes on the ground. It's this giant patchwork of winking lights and it goes far past the horizon. It goes on forever and ever and now, walking under it as it threatens to crush me, I understand just how tiny I am, just how big and impersonal the whole universe is. I have to look again and I do and I can't stand it because I feel like I'm falling. Now I know why I can scream and scream and never, ever be answered. It's all too big.
An eighteen-wheeler blasts around the bend and vooms by me like a tornado. When it goes by my heart roars like an avalanche and I get scared and shivers go through me like high voltage. The truck barrels past so big and so rapid that I think for a few seconds I could be swallowed whole by something like that. I'm very small. It's like the way a man can wipe out an anthill without even thinking about it. I could go that fast, without anyone ever knowing.
I wander past some of the bigger, nicer houses in town. I'm coming up on the town center, now, and the library. I go by the library and I can feel my heart freeze up and smash like a piece of glass as I think about how Zoe and I were there and how those girls treated her that night and how we became friends then, very good friends and it was sort of uncomfortable at first, because showing yourself to someone is like stripping for a doctor and sharing isn't easy in the beginning. It was only later when I realized how much that night meant to me and now it all just sticks into me like a long, sharp knife and slices my guts up and now I look up into the endless sky again and I want to scream at it. I want to spit at it, knock all the stars out of it forever.
Windham Street crosses over into Brookdale Center. I walk past all these lifeless edifices I can barely recognize now. The First National Bank. The Post Office. The Brookdale Pharmacy and the Gentry Street Mall, where Mom and Dad do their grocery shopping. Where Zoe held a job for a week or so. Get it away from me. But then it doesn't even look the way I'm used to seeing it. It could be a whole different place, because it's after nine and everything's closed over, dead. Dark windows, dark storefronts, empty parking lots. The shadows are moving in, bigger than ever, to take over. The library is closed, too, blotted out. Everything's extinct. No life. I'm walking through blocks and blocks of darkness.
 
The center opens up and moderate traffic is still whizzing through, people in their transports rushing off to destinations I can't even imagine, not that I want to. They cast the only light on this shrouded town. Professional Buildings. Churches. Town Hall. The Waterworks. The Golden Lion Restaurant. All dark. Blank. They look like they've been abandoned and no one will ever come back to them again. Their doors and windows make gloomy, howling, empty faces that screech their hollow agony into a night that doesn't care. I turn my head away because those faces are too frightening to look at.
I walk past the 24-hour gas station in then intersection. It's the only stable light in the whole intersection other than a few streetlamps. There's a man with an overcoat and a knit hat pacing around. Again, I stress, Summer is coming. He has salt-and-pepper hair, the beginnings of a salt-and-pepper beard and he looks like he's waiting for a war to begin. His face looks like a rock, but it looks like a rock that's ready to open up its concealed mouth and bite a chunk out of someone's arm. As I skulk through his airspace I hear him talking. Spitting out every syllable like he hates them all individually, he snarls, “nine-teen-nine-ty-threeeeee,” and then he fades from earshot. I'm careful not to look at him, because I don't know what he'll do if he sees me looking at him. I cross the street to the right side of the center and I hit the bridge over the brook. Now I can hear the man yelling. He's raving like a monster and I don't understand anything he's saying. He sounds furious, though, and his hollering gives me a chill. I look over my shoulder because I'm afraid he might be yelling at me and I'm getting ready to run, but there he is at the gas station, stomping back and forth, waving his fist at something I can't see. I pick up the pace, though, because the sound of his voice is threatening. It's making me shake. Hoof it, Jack, hoof it. I want to put a lot of distance between myself and a dangerous person like that.
I hit the other side of the bridge and there's this fat old woman sitting on the little wall there. She's all filthy and she looks like she's been wearing those same mismatched clothes for at least ten years or so. She's just sitting there on her perch and she's rocking back and forth like she's in a trance. She's mumbling to herself and I can't hear what she's saying. I wonder if it makes sense? Probably not---anyway, I don't want to know.
She looks up at me with a big smile, but it isn't a happy smile that says she's glad to see me. It's a nervous smile that asks, you aren't going to hurt me, are you? And it makes me laugh at first that someone like her would be scared of a little puke like me, but then I remember that my face is this big, zig-zagging perversity and anyone would be afraid of it. Christ knows I am.
She has this long, greasy, black hair, parted down the middle. Half her teeth are missing and she looks like her nose has been smashed in and broken like ten times over. I walk away. I don't want to look at her. She's horrible. I don't know, though. I may be worse.
On and forward though I have no idea where I'm going or why I came this way to begin with. I walk past the darkened buildings. I don't want to look at them because I know, if I do, I'll see those doors and those windows form those howling, mourning faces again and those faces scare me. I keep my eyes on the ground and I don't look up. Everything around me is a big nightmare. I don't want to see anymore. I know I can't, but I wish I could just keep my eyes on the ground for the rest of my life---not see any of these horrible sights, not see my own face in a mirror, not see anything ever again.
Down Anderson Street and past Brookdale First Congregational Church. I try not to look but everything is magnetic and I'm forced to look. It's a little stretch of hot top on the left side of the church. There's a pair of cops working some guy over. I can only make out silhouettes against rear parking lot lights but I can see that the guy they're beating up is a very old man. He's short and slight and rumpled and the two towering cops are shaking him and taunting him. One knees the old man in the stomach. The old man falls down and pukes. One cop, I think, is looking at me, but it's hard to tell in the dark. I don't want him watching me if he is, so I keep right on walking.
There's a little dirt trail in back of Ebbet's Hardware Store that runs through a stretch of woods and comes out by the Mister Convenience Shopping Square. I take the trail because I don't want to hang around long enough for those two cops to start getting interested in me.
I wander down the little wooded path and I come out at the rear of the square. I see a bunch of people loitering around the back of the building furthest from me. I can almost hear them. The callous scrape of their coarse voices. The shadows make them almost invisible, but I can see them moving around and I can make out the orange pinpoints of their lit cigarettes.
I steer the hell clear of those people and I come out to the front of the square. Mister Convenience is another graveyard. All the light, even the the lamps in the parking lot, gone. Squeezed out. Strangled into darkness.
Across the street I see Callie's Truckstop and Dunkin Donuts, both open because they never close. I cross the street and ten I decide to avoid them both. I can't go into either place because of my face. I'm not fit to dwell with humans. I hit the bike trails in the woods  in back of those places, instead. I pass Kallie's. Then I'm passing Dunkin's and I no longer want to be on the trail. Up ahead I see them, fighting and rolling and yelling and flailing and kicking the shit out of each other. They're a bunch of rough, mean kids, or I think they're kids. I don't know. As I draw closer to them I can hear them, their bodies bashing together, and so are their voices as they tangle.
“UUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHGAWDAMNUUUUUUUUUUUH!!!!!!”
“YUHMUTHUHFUHKKUHUMGONNUHKIKYURASS,UUUUUUUHHHHHH!!!!!!”
“YUHDICK! YUHFUKKINSCREWINME, YUHDICK!!!!!!!!!!”
“UUUUUWWWWALLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUULLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!”
It's scaring me bad, now, because the closer I get to them the less and less human they sound. Are they even people, or are they something lower? Is there anything lower than people? Fuck this. Cut back through the woods, over to the back of Dunkin Donuts. I don't want to get any closer to this shit, I'm sure of it. I head through the stretch of woods and stumble over a rock, almost falling on my face. I bounce back and I keep going, faster, in case those creeps on the trail heard me. I have to step over a brook to get to the Dunkin's parking lot and it's an easy step, but I go off balance and splash my foot down in the muck. I pull up a little and SPLOP! Out comes my dirty, wet foot. Here it is, though, the back parking lot, and I'm limping with disgust into it, but I can't say I have any surprise in me. I hit the front lot and continue onto the street and then some guy with a skull tattooed on his arm staggers at me. “Heyy,” he calls, “hey, manh, yoo!” I keep limping forward. “Hey! You godda dollah faha cuppa cawfee? Hey! I bikedid alla way from fuggin' Vermon'! Hey! Muthuhfuckuh! Hey!”
Up the road on my wet, shitty foot and his shouts recede. I walk five minutes. Ten minutes. It's like the Boston Marathon with a shoe full of shit. Squish, squish, squishing up the road.
A pickup truck, a 4x4, coasts by me. As it passes, some freakoid leans out the window, “hey, faggot!” And douses me in the face with beer. The truck barrels off and I try to readjust my vision. This is what they do to you when you're a leper, a mutant, a killer, like me. This is the Real-ass world they try to teach you to brave in school. Eat or be eaten.
Good evening, Johnny-Jack, welcome to the fruition of the American Fucking Dream. This is it, the big, wide world in all its glory, only it loosened its tie and tore away its pretty Halloween Mask. Now here it is, leering at you, dead honest, maggots and all. Our happy, kickass, go-for-it, party-hardy world, minus the beautiful TV commercial facial job. Minus the glitzy, bouncy aerobics workout soundtrack. Minus the designer clothes. Naked, truthful, this is what we're left with when everyone gives up. This is the world that disassembles itself in the bathroom mirror when nobody's looking.
Hello, Ugly.
Only it hasn't got a sense of humor, it isn't cute and it isn't being friendly with you. Them only time it laughs is after it shows you what it's really about. When it pisses in your face.
The wonderful world revealed its face to me in the dark and it's an awful sight. It's a machine that chews flesh. I saw its teeth and halleluja, chillun, they were ravenous, gnashing, like a giant mouth full of piledrivers. This is the face I see when all Norman Rockwell's descendents go to bed at night with their warm milk and their candy-striped nightcaps. This is what I see when no one's around to keep up appearances.
Off I slog up the darkened street and under the overpass. I know a mile or so up the highway the Mall is closed and everyone at the Hobby Shoppe has gone home. It's abandoned. Barren. The whole damned mall, empty and yawning up at the sky like a cancerous crater.
I hear the “buh-doomp, buh-doomp” of cars on the overpass above me. It's like being in a cavern. It's like everyone and everything has been obliterated and I'm alone here on a giant ball of waste. But I know the truth, now, and if this were an empty world I'd be better off, but it's not and I'm not, it's night, it's unmasking time and this is all bad, sick, terrifying.
There's an unreal light up ahead, wedged in a comfortable nest of pines. It's Jourgenson's, which is open late. It may as well be open forever, because it isn't ten or eleven or even thirteen o'clock. It's far later than that. It's Forever O'Clock, and the Forever-Meter says to me, it's all over, Johnny-Jack, it's all over, because this is the long night, Planet Earth is fed up with maintaining its niceties and that's all, Chief, no more lost weekends. No more Matthews House with the ultra-green grass. No more Franconia Notch, no more echoes. No more comfort. The sun is never going to come up again.
And still I'm walking. Approaching Jourgenson's. But is it going to be stripped of all its garish, fast-food, quick-ratburger-after-the-game friendliness and homeyness? I see the red-and-white neon glare, but it's stil obscured by that wall of pine trees. I'm heading towards it and I know now that it's the last place in the whole fetid world that I want to go near. But can feel the place screaming for me. I can't stop, oh, Christ, I would if I could. I want to turn around and run, but it's like a magnet. I can tell there's something at this horrible place I'm supposed to see, but I have no idea what it could be. I don't want to go. I can't help it, though, and I can't stop myself. It's sucking me in against my will. I need to stop, to leave, because whatever's drawing me to that filthy neon pit will be too much, too terrible, like one of Zoe's paintings come to life, oh, God, now I understand everything she ever did, how did she ever cope with what she saw, oh, God, get me out of here, I can't handle it. Too ugly. Too ugly. Take this cup from my lips, O Lord, because I can tell that whatever I see here will end my world. I'm scared, so scared, oh, God, don't bring me here, take me anywhere else. I can't take what you're about to show me, take it away, I know I will be destroyed by this.
And the gentle, goading voice of The Lord touched Johnny-Jack and said, go, son, go. It's your destiny.
No, no, no, I can't, my feet still moving forward.
Yes, yes, says The Lord, whispering comfort into the heater of my head and so I move on, I move on, and yea, children, the hands of the angels lay on Jackie's shoulders and they pushed him along, and they bestowed upon him heaven's comfort in this dark, evil world, and yes, bear witness to the miracle of miracles, for te Heavenly Host played bucket brigade and they pushed little Johnny-Jack Pettet into the woods beside the Burger Brothel and they carried him to the light, bretheren and sisteren, to the edge of the forest.
No, I cry, no, I can't take it, I can't take it, please, no, pleeeeeaaaaaassse.................
And the hands of the Heavenly Host encircled little Jackie in kindness and they showed him the awful sight beyond the trees and Jackie's eyes would not close and he opened his mouth to scream but only silence came out. And all the time the hands caressed little Jackie and reassured him in soft whispers, no, no, little Jackie, you don't have to scream and run, nothing here will hurt you, we're showing you a picture, we're just letting you see something and it won't hurt you at all.
AND JACKIE WAS WITNESS TO THE AWFUL VISION OF BROOKDALE'S PRIDE LAYING WASTE TO THE WAILING NEON SHRINE OF PUKE. THEY WERE OUTSIDE IN THEIR BROOKDALE HIGH CEREMONIAL COLORS, RAMPAGING AROUND THE ROWS OF PICKUP TRUCKS AND TRANS AMS THAT WERE THEIR MANIFEST DESTINY.
AND THE VOICES OF THE HEAVENLY HOST SAID, SEE, JACKIE, SEE, THERE ARE YOUR ENEMIES. NOW, PAY ATTENTION, THEY SAID. THERE IS BRYAN AND BILL, THERE IS MARK AND ERIC, THERE IS CHARLIE, AMY, OH, LOOK! THERE IS CHERYL AND JACKIE SAID no, no, don't make me look, BUT THE LORD IN HIS WISDOM AND POWER SHOWED JACKIE EVERYTHING.
AND THE FLESHEATERS MADE MUCH NOISE, DANGLING OFF THE RESTAURANT DOORS AND JACKIE FELT THE POWER OF THEIR CRUELTY--”clit-TORIS!!!!” SCREAMED CHARLIE GOSSLING AND ALL HIS FRIENDS LAUGHED AND AMY SMITH CRIED OUT, “OH, YOU'RE BOGUS” BUT SHE WAS LAUGHING TOO.
No, no, don't show me, WHIMPERED JACKIE AS HE SHRUNK BACK, BUT THE LORD IN HIS WISDOM HELD JACKIE FAST AND MADE HIM SEE. JACKIE PITIED THE PEOPLE WHO WORKED AT JOURGENSON'S, THINKING ABOUT HOW THESE ANIMALS WOULD TREAT THOSE OF THEM WHO WEREN'T YOUNG TURKS----THE THINGS THEY MIGHT SAY TO THEM, THE NAMES THEY MIGHT CALL THEM. THESE BROOKDALE HEROES AND HEROINES WITH THEIR FAITH IN THE MARCHING BOOT. JACKIE ENVISIONED MESSY TABLES, UNSCREWED PEPPER SHAKERS. Noooooo, HE CRIED, no more, no more, BUT YES, SAID THE ANGELS OF GOD AND THEY HELD JACKIE FAST.
AND THEN THE WORLD FELL IN ON ITSELF BECAUSE JACKIE SAW BRYAN AND CHERYL, THE TWO WHO GLOWED TOGETHER BENEATH THAT NEON RATBURGER ROOF. JACKIE LOOKED FOR THE LORD WOULD NOT LET HIM TURN AWAY AND JACKIE SAW THAT THE TWO WERE NOT GLOWING, THEY WERE NOT AS HE HAD SEEN THEM BEFORE, NOT TOUCHING, NOT HOLDING HANDS, THEY WERE ANGRY, NOW THEY WERE HAVING WORDS AND THE OTHERS STOPPED FROM THEIR REVELRIES AND WATCHED BRYAN AND CHERYL IN SILENCE WHILE JACKIE KNELT, TRANSFIXED IN THE WOODS AND BORE WITNESS. HE FELT TERROR, WATCHING PIECES OF THE WORLD FALL AWAY AND NOW HE COULD HEAR EVERY WORD THEY SAID. HE TRIED TO SHUT IT OUT. THE LORD IN HIS WISDOM AND POWER DIDN'T LET HIM.
CHERYL WAS WALKING AWAY FROM BRYAN AND BRYAN WAS SHOUTING, SHOUTING “COME BACK HERE, BITCH! COME BACK HERE! GET IN THE CAR!”
CHERYL STANDING AWAY FROM HIM, ARMS STRAIGHT DOWN AT HER SIDES, FISTS LIKE LITTLE BALLS OF CLENCHED, ANGRY BONE, 'NO, BRYAN, WE'RE THROUGH, I'VE HAD IT WITH YOU,” AND SHE DIDN'T GET TO FINISH HER SENTENCE BECAUSE THEN BRYAN WAS YELLING AT HER.
POINTING AT THE PASSENGER SIDE OF THE TRANS AM, “SIT DOWN IN THE CAR GODDAMN IT! I'M NOT GONNA TELL YOU AGAIN, BITCH!”
“NO! NO!” CHERYL SCREAMED AND HER FACE WAS LIKE AN ANGRY FROG'S, PULLED TIGHT ACROSS, POP-EYED, WIDE-MOUTHED, AND THEN JACKIE SAW THAT HER FACE WAS SUNBURN RED AND SHE WAS CRYING. “I'm not getting in the fucking CAR with you, Bryan! I'm sick of the way you treat people, I'm sick of the way you TALK to people! Nobody's your furniture and I'm--”
AND AGAIN JACKIE SAW THAT BRYAN WOULD NOT LET CHERYL TALK AND INSIDE JACKIE SHOOK AND BURNED FOR HE KNEW WHAT HAVING SOMEONE BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN YOU FORCE YOUR MOUTH SHUT WAS LIKE. “YOU WHORE!” BRYAN YELLED. “I'M GETTING IN THIS FUCKING CAR RIGHT NOW, YOU FUCKIN' BITCH, DON'T YOU EVER CALL ME AGAIN, DON'T YOU EVER SHOW UP AT MY DOOR, THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE YOU COME FROM,” AND CHERYL WHIMPERED, CHILDREN, AND SHE RAN TO HER BRYAN. JACKIE SAW AND HE WAS SORE AFRAID AND CHERYL CLUNG TO HER BRYAN LIKE HE WAS THE HOLINESS OF LIFE MADE HUMAN AND LO, JACKIE HEARD HER CRYING TO HIM IN A MEEK LITTLE VOICE, “i love you, Bryan, i'm sorry, don't leave me, I love you.” AND SHE PRESSED HERSELF TIGHT TO HIM AND HIS ROUGH HAND CAME DOWN AND SQUEEZED HER BUNS GENTLY, LIKE A TENDER, COMPASSIONATE LOVER. LIKE A MASTER WHO KNOWS THE VALUE OF HIS PROPERTY.
LIKE AN OWNER.
THE BROOKDALE FLESHEATERS SAW THE REUNION, CHERYL'S RECAPTURE AND IT WAS GOOD, CHILDREN. THEY HOWLED THEIR OBSCENE APPROVAL INTO THE NIGHT.
LITTLE JACKIE COWERED IN THE PINES AND WEPT IN HORROR AND PITY AND THE HANDS OF THE HEAVENLY HOST STROKED HIS SAD LITTLE PUPPY DOG HEAD. THE SOUND WENT OUT WITH THOSE ANIMAL HOWLS AND THE NEON RATBURGER TRANS AM HELL IMPLODED INTO DARKNESS AND SILENCE AND THE CHOIRS OF HEAVEN WHISPERED INTO JACK'S EAR, NOW YOU SEE, THE TOLD HIM, NOW YOU UNDERSTAND.
I know, wept Jackie, I know, thank you.
THE HEAVENLY HOST WHISPERED AND CARESSED LITTLE JACKIE'S HEAVING BONES. SOME GET LOST, THEY TOLD HIM. ENSLAVED.
AND JACKIE HEARD THE VOICE OF THE MAD ANGEL HANNIBAL SNEER IN HIS LEFT EAR, THEY'RE ALL NAMED BIFF.
JACKIE, EXALTING THE GLORY OF THE LORD, I KNOW. Thank you.
SOMETIMES, WHISPERED THE ANGELS, THERE ARE THOSE WHO ARE GOOD AND SWEET, BUT THEY GET LOST.
Damaged, HELPED JACKIE.
YES, WHISPERED THE ANGELS, YES, JACKIE. AND SOMETIMES WE MUST STAND UP AND HELP THESE POOR, LOST PEOPLE, NO MATTER HOW HARD IT MAY BE. AND WE HAVE TO HELP THEM SEE BEYOND THEIR BONDAGE.
I'm afraid, JACKIE TOLD THE ANGELS.
WE KNOW, THE SAID, AND KEPT STROKING HIS SAD, SCARED HEAD. BUT YOU UNDERSTAND. YOU UNDERSTAND.
Yes, CRIED JACKIE IN HIS GRATITUDE, I understand. Thank you.
EVERYTHING WILL BE GOOD AND FINE, JACKIE, THEY SAID.
I know, CRIED JACKIE. Thank you. Thank you.


*******************************

I've been scoping the Hobby Shoppe for three days. Finally, a day for me rolls around. No Barry. No Greg. Time to go shopping.
Mel is there, presiding by proxy over Barry's conquered Hobby Nation. “Jack! Jesus Christ! It's been a while!”
“Yeah,” being friendly because I have to, “hi.”
“You don't look very well, Jack. You look very gaunt. Have you been sick?”
'Yeah, I've been sick. I've been very gaunt.”
“No, seriously, Jack,” putting on is concerned face. Sweet, congenial, good on appearance, Such a Mel.
“No, seriously, I have been sick. Sick with the Flu.”
“Sorry to hear that, Jack,” looking sympathetic to fit the situation.
“Yeah, it was hell,” I tell him, “I was puking like a mad thing.”
“Well,” he changes tone and I get the idea he doesn't want to follow that line of conversation, “what can I do you for?”
“Nothing, really, I was just popping in to say, 'hi'.”
“Well, it's good to see you, Jack.”
“Yeah, uh, actually, as long as I'm here, let me grab a couple things.” And off I wander through the store. I scan the paint section and I grab a couple of Testor's paints up, just for the sake of appearance. Olive drab and brick red. Good choices. Then I hit another aisle and pick up the X-Acto Knife and the drafting compass. I double back and grab a cheapo pack of manilla folders, just in case he starts asking questions.
I drop the whole mess of it beside the cash register. Mel rings it all up. “Talk to Greg lately?” He asks. What, and Mel DOESN'T?
“No, he and I don't get along too well these days.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. Fourteen-fifty, Jack.”
“Wait a sec. You deducted something.”
“Ssshhhh.” winking like a sly compatriot. “I'm using your employee discount.”
I laugh at the proper, acceptable level in accordance with the situation. “Thanks, Mel,” but I mean it. I only have seventeen bucks on me.
He rings me in and hands me my change. “Like a bag, sir?”
“Sure,” and he pulls out a paper bag and opens it up.
“So,” loading the folders in first, “graduating next week, eh, Jack?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. Mel's little world is so fragile. Why fuck it up with the truth?
“That's great! I loved my graduation. My brother threw this huge kegger and....”
“Yeah, Mel? I can't really afford to hang around. I've got a lot of business to take care of.”
“Oh! Sorry!” Ever amiable. “Here you go,” handing me the bag.
“Thanks, Mel,” throwing him a playful salute. “Gotta boogie! See you in the funny papers.”
“Jack!”
Trying to exit, “yeah?”
“What's wrong with your face?”
“Huh?”
“Are those bruises on your face?”
“Bruises? No...”
“They look like bruises, Jack.”
“No, Mel,” leaving. Smiling, “that's just gaunt. Y'know....from the Flu.”



Copyright 1990 C.F. Roberts/2015 Molotov Editions

Thursday, September 17, 2015

3 DAYS/3 WALKS PART ONE: THE WALK (1994)

In the early 90s I wrote eighty billion Guy-Who-Can't-Get-Laid stories. I wasn't getting laid at the time----go figure. Most of them were angsty, melodramatic tone poems of sorts. “The Walk” was probably my favorite of the bunch. It ran in FAIRY TALES FROM THE URBAN HOLOCAUST, my tandem chap with Alfred Vitale, and was published under his aegis, Yorkville Press. I think I also did a spoken version of it on this audio collaboration with Kevin Hibshman (FEARLESS/DISTURBING DREAMS AND DRIED BLOOD) and don't ask me why the hell I did that....it really didn't work in the format (at least I don't think it did). So, here it is, published around '94, I think....


THE WALK

Raging stuck tunnel lust lost confusion fused.....poor little smashed mirror....
My conclusion is ever alienation from rigged games. Your sensibilities pre-programmed, you kicked back with a preconceived agenda. What it did. You watched that movie....
….you bought that movie...
….Falling....
….Sinking....
….sucked under third time manic wall of no-hope....
I can't get away from it, it's everywhere. Even most of you who piss and moan to your Morrissey CDs about present tense inconvenience, about your temporary states, are nothing----you're softcore. You've got nothing at all on me.
Give it a body, give it a face, give it a mouth, a maw that rips and rends.
It's like they took the sonofabitch out its hole, made it a saint in spite of itself, crucified it, nailing it to the four corners of my head and so we sit as it yowls and threatens and shreds, so we sit, eyeball to eyeball, tooth to tooth, spittle to flying spittle. It's all I see, it's my whole universe.
And still you persist in going along, bobbing your fool head to that inevitable well-worn tune and you ask, “why? Why abandonment? Why sullen?”
Because chicanery, motherfucker! Because snake oil, because keeping up with the Joneses! Because follow the leader and other marching hymns!
Not a bloody lot in the whole sad world, you saviors you liberators you hawkish mawkish regulators can preserve me from THE WALK.
I'm talking about a self-incarnating road of trials a cancer of a thousand faces leering a ravishing body sprawling I'm talking I'm talking----
#################
It's the science of condemnation, of Entropy.
She said that everyone suffers at the hand of the heart; said that hearts crush hearts, that's the way of the world. Meanwhile she gets something to tide her over, even if said train's careening down the pike without the benefit of brakes. I wish I were a magician who was capable of alleviating blindness...people tie themselves to destruction, unveering and when salvation of any sort slaps them they are too locked into doom to notice. I wish I could shake every person on this planet and scream at them. Their complacency and bovine acceptance of all the slaughter will be the death of me----if it is, I hope to take a few of them with me......
I will kick, fight and scream all the way down......
People search for religions and philosophies to help them accept the horrors and the pain that befall them and others. They dehumanize in the grip of rationale and come to terms with barbarism. Evil and suffering are shrugged off as things that must happen---people need these psychic buffers to throw blinders on them so that they can swallow the randomness of cruelty.......
################
Fragile: Do Not Break.
I know you your face occupies an endless motif perpetuates homespun futility I know you yeah I know you taxidermy in time and space impaled on exhibition superficial details shift mutate fundamental horror goes uncanged you're a rerun the toe stubbed over and over and I should know better and like the windup soldier marching headfirst steadfast into a wall again and again mistakes echo in a loop that never stops....hey you! Were you conscious of station the last couple times out? Can you be different this time?
Can I?
###################

We are all of us
(the bus overturned)
all of us (kids running around in the road)
treading (in the freeway)
(screaming, bleeding)
We are all of us treading
(motorists hitting the gas, scoring those crucial points)
a line
between
(several hedonistic types ram the bus itself thus totaling their own vehicles and in some breakneck thrill cases dying themselves)
grace
(but hell it was kicks)
and
(the kids still scrambling, crying for their mothers)
vulgarity
(TV News confirms 12 killed 10 injured)
####################
It plays in my head again and again, being in their shitpile, crawling their gauntlet, They kicked and beat me 'til I screamed, I bled, I shit, I cried....after a while it was a fight uphillnjust to breathe without the lung suction ripping my chest in half---I couldn't talk straight and the lot of them, those handsome, beaming heroes stood over me digging swinging heels and dicks in my ribs, my back, my groin, my face, laughing, “howzat?” They were laughing, “howzat?”
In my facebashed word impediment I slurred, shitting, bleeding, “because you say so,” and brushed upward with my ragged right arm. It was my plan to impale the asshole's balls on my fist but I was all adrenalin no punch and they stepped on my hand, it felt like they had smashed it to a million pieces, it splayed out and quit on me. They laughed.......
####################
RUMINATIONS ON THE WALK:
Protagonist in his confusion always encounters the grotesques. They are everywhere, everyone,----sometimes they are man, sometimes they are machine, probably a combination of both. They can't be real but there is little illusion that they are.
As streets seem to stand on end the grotesques filter into consciousness---they interact and react. They involve themselves in sundry activities out in the margins of perception—the murky ones in the shadows and in the backs of buildings and in the woods out by the railroad tracks engage in actions sexual, violent or both. They fuck like war machines, not like humans. They leer at the protagonist, shout linguistic parodies of human hostility. Sometimes their shadows are enough to provoke a phyical detour..........
###################
Pug, true to his nature, chases parked cars, flattens his face, doesn't learn. The hard line of banality taints Pug's disdain for the impurity of cynicism. Pug in his tenacity devolves into a self-abusive windup toy.
###################
ONE MORE STAB OF ENTROPY: You called the girl. You always call the girl. She's in her ever-mobile-stage. Unlike you, she has somewhere to go. She just left, out the door, down the street. You quote Flipper lyrics to her roommate and hang up.
It's the next two or three turns you fear the most.
Civic Destruction is underway your tax dollars at work and all the exits on the highway are closed.....
###################
----the machinery so systematic in its programmed disdain whirred and clanked going through its sinister, rote motions, hacking, gutting, subdividing---splattered remnants of FISH took on a new, whittled feature for distribution as product and for miles about that formidable rust apocalypse the dampened skies became unbearably rank......................
dogging the holocaust that rings in my head---all I can think of is the shit I went through to get where I got and I got shit anyway....the thousands of fucking miles I crawled on my belly all for a taste of elevation and all I tasted was asphalt and the dust and the shit encrusted in the asphalt.....I screech at the top of my burnt, sorry sentiment and in my mind's eye they are all destroyed---glass flies and maims as windows smash, limbs are torn off and heads are removed in a wind...I could do it all, mauled in my insides all for a little taste...................
###################
 
###################
Frankie was huddled under a table in a dark, quiet corner of the big house sucking on a bottle of Mad Dog while the party went on full swing. Frankie had heard that Kelly and Sid were supposed to show up and the thought scared him. Word was Sid was real possessive and controlling and everyone knew how he, Frankie, felt about Kelly....Frankie took another swig.
Sound of the door opening and in lurched Sid, half-in-the-bag by the looks, yanking Kelly along by the wrist while she argued.
“Sid,” she objected, “you're hurting me!”
“Shut up, cunt,” said Sid.
They landed on the floor. Frankie took another belt of wine.
Sid, like an evil, ape-brow reflection, drank from a bottle of tequila. He looked at Kelly as though he had won her at an auction. He started roughly kneading her breasts.
“Oww! Sid...!”
“Shut up!” He went at her for a little while and she began to moan.
“Oh! Ah, Sid, you're my man...uh...you understand me...you're such a good conversationalist.....you're my BEST FRIEND...”
“Shut your mouth, bitch! I'm God! Don't you ever mouth off to me and don't you EVER look at another man, get it? You know your place.....”
Dutifully, Kelly unzipped Sid's fly and took his horsedick out. Frankie felt useless looking at the size of the thing---it was uncircumcized and looked like a greasy little elephant's trunk.
Somehow Kelly managed to get her mouth around the thing. She sucked and horked on it for awhile, working it furiously. Sid payed her some mind at first, whispering soft threats and abuse to her but eventually he seemed to get bored and his eyes wandered. He saw Frankie huddled in the corner, staring, and eyed him disapprovingly. “Fuck's your problem?”
Frankie remained silent and Sid laid his head back. Kelly kept sucking, even after it flagged and went limp. She kept going, though, her head bobbing up and down like precision machinery, working the flaccid thing like she'd ceased to be human. Frankie had to look away. Forever seemed to go by. He got up and he stole out, thinking about that day they'd had dinner together, how she'd told him all about her family, her desire to be a teacher someday, they'd talked about a million things. The mechanical slurping sounds were still going on behind him........
#################
You toil away at the nightly ring toss. The girl blows by and ignores you. You recall how she never failed at one time to stop by and grab a talk and a laugh with you...that was a long time ago. Hell, she saw you. She didn't want to see you, she didn't want you to see her............
#################
In each scenario one will happen upon an edifice of some religious significance. It always seems to turn up on The Walk. It just does. It might be a church---it might be a candy store or a burger joint. It's still a church of some sort, even if you wouldn't initially think so. Last refuge repays pilgrim (weary from trials) with scorn. Sanctuary in its myriad incarnations devolves into twisted punchline. Poor schmuck steps furtive, beaten across sidewalk,. Icon looms like proverbial carrot on a stick. Pilgrim wavers. Door slams.
“Welcome to Epiphanyland, place your order. Today's Special, Savation, has been depleted due to popular demand. In its place we have erected the Entropyburger, a hot new item you'll be seeing a lot more of................”
#################
that time it was over, i was through and i'd had it i was freaking out i was all over the house screaming i was cutting myself I couldn't take it too much too many times i couldn't take it anymore i went into the bathroom and attacked myself i beat the mirror into a thousand pieces with my fist i vanquished the cursed face no one would ever love it hurt like hell i laughed i cried i screamed some more i retched i heaved i laughed i cried i pooooooorrrrrrr liddle shatterrrred miiiirrrrror
slogged to the urbane cathedral fell to the stone doorstep cut my head open on pretty stained glass watched the blood run down my eyes as the parishioners sang their warm hymns of joy and togetherness and the door slammed shut and the pastor assured them that they had truly succeeded in purging the demons, the perverts, the subversives, the savages....and a great, triumphant noise went up...they sang halleluja forever and ever world without end praise the lord amen and i lay outside and bled....................................
..............ah, jesus.....................
....................ah, jesus......................
#################
Stationary in hallowed alcoves eyeless saints scream frozen screams. Their gaping eyeholes gush plasma; they inhale humanity and spew out pinfeathers.
Brian Shane once told me, “yes, God is a Wolf!”
#################
I used to think Dark Night of the Soul was an occasional process which ran the gamut of trial-revelation-change for better or worse. I was wrong. It just goes on it never stops it never ends it goes on and on and there is never any point or lesson to be learned it is an existing condition this is not an illusion this is not a temporary state this is happening this is here this is going on RIGHT THIS MINUTE.......................................................
#################
The screams are incredible.
The job done, Frankie puts down the big file and stares into the dresser mirror at his handiwork. He knows it might be some time before he can talk again. It doesn't matter, he supposes, as words are an inherently useless thing. He looks at the table, the shavings, the blood, the stained file, then again he looks at the mirror. His face grimy with tears, sweat, bloody and dirt he parts his ravaged mouth (with considerable difficulty) into a smile. He has filed all his teeth down to needle-like points.
Satisfied, he gets up and walks out the door, a new man ready to exist in a new world.


 
Copyright 1994 Yorkville Press, 2015 Molotov Editions

Friday, September 11, 2015

NOVEL EXCERPT--THE EASTER EGG HUNT


Day off won't see Jane O God O Sacred Heart O
drunk again sitting at the table someone Paul or Hamilton I can't figure blows by and smugs something about “if your idea of enjoyment is drinking piss and losing control of your actions....Sorry, Cal....”
It's raining out

Copyright 1991 C.F. Roberts/2015 Molotov Editions

##################################################

Believe it or not I don't do this blog to toot my own horn (What am I gonna say? “Here's this Kerouac ripoff I shat out in my 20's which is presently languishing in unpublished limbo----Yay Me?”) I'm a fuckin' writer, I'm into writing, sharing writing and talking about writing and the whole process has probably saved my life any number of times.
Going through my manuscript for THE EASTER EGG HUNT for some future bloggage I found this one passage which I'm still pretty happy with. Ending the passage with no punctuation the way I did here is something I'm still actually very proud of.

COMING SOON TO USELESS FILTH: 3 WALKS/ 3 DAYS

“The Walk” (1994)
HELLO, UGLY (1990)
THE EASTER EGG HUNT (1991)
along with a few smatterings of dreary shop talk.

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
FAITH NO MORE-Best of FNM
THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION-Freak Out
FRANK ZAPPA-Overnight Sensation
THE RESIDENTS-Hallowed be thy Ween

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

A SERIES OF INCOMPLETE THOUGHTS FOR WHICH YOU HAVE NO REFERENCE POINT AND WON'T UNDERSTAND


  1. How do they both make tacos?
  2. Those must be our guys. The other guys wouldn't know to use the word “love”.
  3. That looks like a snake. It's not moving...maybe a toy snake?
  4. They know all about each other. How can they be neighbors now? How do they not have drive-bys?
  5. I had this partial dream while I was sitting there. Something about bald guys. Triplets.
  6. How do they stay in business next door to each other like that? How do they not have drive-bys?
  7. God, do you suppose they were a family?
  8. Well, you know...Photosynthesis. They'll help clean the air.


    Copyright 2015 Molotov Editions 


    COMING SOON TO USELESS FILTH: 3 WALKS/ 3 DAYS

    “The Walk” (1994)
    HELLO, UGLY (1990)
    THE EASTER EGG HUNT (1991)
    along with a few smatterings of dreary shop talk.

    THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
    L'HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON-Serge Gainsbourg
    ANGEL DUST-Faith No More
    “I Come with Knives”-IAMX
    “Jimmy Jimmy”-The Undertones